R. Umar Abbasi says only about 20 seconds passed between man being pushed and train hitting him

R. Umar Abbasi, the freelance photographer who snapped Tuesday's gruesome New York Post front-page image of a man seconds before he was struck and killed by a subway train, said Wednesday that he could not have saved the victim.

The cover photo — depicting 58-year-old Ki Suk Han seconds before a downtown Q train hit him — sparked outrage among readers, many of whom questioned why the photographer did not pull the man from the tracks.

On NBC's "Today," Abbasi said it was only 20 seconds before the train to hit Han after he was pushed from the platform by a man with whom he was arguing.

"If this thing happened again with the same circumstances, whether I had a camera or not, and I was running toward it, I could not have rescued Mr. Han," Abbasi told Matt Lauer on the morning program. "There was no way. If I could have, I would have."

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